Coming up on two years in Canader...

I realised today that Friday will be my second anniversary in Canada.

I was trying to think what I was doing this time two years ago.

I think I was in Springtown.

Hang on, I'll check...

Yes I was.

Blogs are great, aren't they.

I was thinking about Springtown today because it rained all day here. Dark hanging clouds with no sunlight breaking through and everywhere the sound of water gurgling. Just like home.

It's funny though, because Himself and I are finally thinking about this old place as home.

We went to his island for the weekend to open his house for the summer and when we got back last night we unpacked and cooked the lobsters we'd been given and sat on the couch eating them and thought... home...happy sigh...

It's not that we don't like the island - we do. Particularly in the summer, when the lobster season is over and everyone's relaxed and up for a barbeque or a bonfire.

It's just always such a hassle at the same time.

The joys of your life partner's past coming up to bite you on the ankle.

Himself's past is not much taller than my ankle and every time I encounter her I feel that if I take my eyes off her for a second she'll bite me. Not because I'm paranoid, but because she has threatened to beat me up so often I'm resigned to the fact that some day she'll finally do it. And I'll have to let her because I'm the sane smart one of the two of us.

So I spend the weekends down there looking over my shoulder, wondering when she'll turn up.

It can be tricky. I like to get it over with early on so I can relax and enjoy the weekend, but then again, it drives Himself crazy and he spends the rest of the weekend moaning about it.

If she turns up too early, that can often mean we get more than one visit. If she doesn't turn up, I am watching and waiting all the time. Sometimes she's on a bender for the weekend and we don't see her at all, just her car speeding to and from the pub.

Those weekends of course can be the worst, because she tends to pack the children off somewhere we can't find them. Which makes Himself pace around muttering for hours. Until I drag him into the woods to walk it off.

We had one minor encounter on Saturday which I ignored because I was in the house (and Himself always charges out into the yard when the car comes up the hill - to head her off at the pass), so I thought we were fine. And then yesterday, when we were on the ferry waiting for it to bring us to the mainland it happened. A shadow flickered over me as I sat in the car. I looked up and there she was, yelling and yammering about something.

I pressed the button and let the window slide down.

She wasn't making any sense, and I can't be arsed arguing with someone as stupid and irrational as her, so I pressed the button again and let it close.

Really slowly. Just the way she hates it.

Unfortunately, this time I was too smart for my own damned good and had forgotten to lock the door, so she pulled it open and told me she was going to punch me in that smart mouth of mine.

I hadn't said a word at this stage. But I've been told there's a look I get on my face when I'm really mad that maybe does it to her.

Plus, with her frizzy plum perm and her thick black eyeliner she reminds me so much of a rabid raccoon cartoon character that I sometimes have to try not to laugh.

At this stage, I am so used to her tantrums and screaming I can keep my face completely calm (for me) and not react. But inside my stomach is churning with rage that I am being subjected to this kind of intimidation by someone I completely despise, beng subjected to something to which I can't react at all.

And I'm nothing if not reactionary to anger.

I found it difficult to relax into the moment, but I can do it now.

Anyways, she eventually moved back enough that I could close the car door without cutting her hand off. Bereft of an audience she demanded her daughter open the back door of the car so she could yell at her for a while. Kitty opened the window, but didn't react either, so she yelled at the back of my head some more.

I wiped the back of my neck like she'd spat on me (really slowly, etc) and she suddenly stopped and ran off the ferry which could then get going.

Sometimes something as simple as that (wiping the back of my neck) can bring her to. She suddenly realises what a show she is making of herself there in front of half the island and stops.

Sometimes the unearthly silence the island creates to contain one of her tantrums filters into her head and she stops to listen to it and suddenly calms down when she realises the entire village has stopped hammering and mowing and is standing enjoying the show.

Sometimes she's so far into the rage you just have to sit there and let her yell herself into satisfaction.

Sometimes that takes a long time.

There is a Chinese saying I repeat to myself when I am being humiliated in public by the cheap slut who broke up Himself's family for a twenty two year old lawnmower repair man, who destroyed his home and his life and stole all his money and took away his children for two years, who still tries to turn them against him and who is trying in her own pitiful, tragic way to destroy my life now because she is so miserable inside she can't bear anyone but herself to appear to be happy.

I say it over and over like a mantra, to keep me in the calm quiet place in my head where I don't want to rip her stupid head off with my bare hands and throw it over the side of the ferry in one monstrous therapeutic moment of life-altering rage.

It says, if you sit by the river long enough, the body of your enemy will float past you.

I'd say that'll take some time this time but!

It always amazes me how much crap I am capable of putting up with.

I try to understand why it's happening so I can deal with it and I take it until I realise it's not me, it's just happening, and then I put up with it for so long.

And then one day I say it has to stop and if it doesn't I just walk away from it.

And I never go back.

Himself is the same.

As the ferry pulled into the wharf on the mainland we gave each other a look that said that day is fast approaching.

Which is a pity, because I love Long Island and the people who live there so much. They hold a memory of me when I was free and happy and unencumbered by life that very few other people have. And they watched Himself and I fall in love and engineered the situation slightly because they knew we were right for each other.